Saturday, May 09, 2020
Latest AI point-missing
In MindMatters as usual. Some corporations are trying to patent the results of Big Data search and optimization. Robert Marks decisively and readably refutes the notion that computers can develop ideas, with several classic examples of Big Ideas and serendipity that couldn't have come from the brute-force grinding of AI.
Marks is brilliantly correct on Big Ideas, but Big Ideas are the OPPOSITE of real-life patents. In reality patents are written to HALT innovation, to surround an idea with an impenetrable wall of incremental variations. The Big Idea doesn't need a patent and often isn't patented, because a patent requires disclosure. Instead, secrets are guarded by NDAs and careerism.
Those incremental variations are developed by a process exactly like Big Data. Before computers, corporations had a large staff of researchers who developed endless variations on each part or function of a machine or system, then acquired patents on each of the minor permutations. Exactly the kind of mental work that computers do BETTER than humans.
Labels: AI point-missing
¶ 6:36 AM
